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07-30-2007, 01:10 AM | #1 |
Princess of Skwerlz
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Worst of Tolkien Art
A link on the German Tolkien Society's forum lead me to a list of horrible paintings of Tolkien subjects. View and despair!
"The horror" by aervir The exotic dancing Lúthien has to be the most ridiculous image I've seen so far. Perhaps some of you have seen more awful pictures to add to the list?
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...' |
07-30-2007, 02:40 AM | #2 |
A Mere Boggart
Join Date: Mar 2004
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Haha! Excellent!
They have a traditional slideshow at Oxonmoot of art and illustration and it's very rude about some of the art, though they tend to pick on Alan Lee which aint fair - they never pick on Nasmith, who is always there, and who isn't always the best, as seen in those pics I hate the Bakshi and Hildebrandt Brothers' pictures of Hobbits - they should be burnt, they have produced the most lumpen, ugly, garden-gnome like undignified Hobbits. Ugh. And that Hildebrandt illustration of Aragorn & Arwen's wedding always makes me laugh - it looks like a Klan gathering. I quite like Roger Garland though - he's so trippy and his art comes out a bit like something disturbing by Bosch.
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07-30-2007, 06:19 AM | #3 |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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If a picture paints a thousand words........
..........then these are mumbling. I have always hated the Hildebrant versions, and Garland does very little for me. Bakshi's Sam is probably one of the worst visually ever. I still think the best Gandalf was done by Caulty. I have seen that slideshow Lal and you are right.......
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07-30-2007, 06:32 AM | #4 |
Curmudgeonly Wordwraith
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Them thar' be some ghastly pictures, matey. I would elect #8 as the ghastliest. The reviewer caught the Pieta reference, but Boromir is modeled more on any one of several St. Sebastian portraits as well. And what's up with Aragorn as an old draq queen?
#6 is obviously the Bolshoi version of Beren and Luthien.
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07-30-2007, 06:51 AM | #5 |
Guard of the Citadel
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Oh, what I really find amusing is the cover of a Tolkien calendar Parmastahir once showed me.
Sauron looked like a strange radioactive cat, and Tolkien had been misspelled as Tolkein on the cover. Fortunately it wasn't used in any calendar. I looked at the link he posted, it was from Ebay, and it seems the picture of this work of art no longer is there. Maybe someone finds it on the net...really funny anyway.
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07-30-2007, 11:55 AM | #6 |
Illustrious Ulair
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08-02-2007, 02:41 PM | #7 |
Princess of Skwerlz
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Here's a Hildebrandt drawing that has Aragorn telling his fishing story:
"And the one that got away was thiiiis big!" Aside from the horribly childlike Hobbits, the one thing that strikes me most is Aragorn's boottops - do tell me how a Ranger is supposed to move silently when his footwear is apt to snag on every twig?! And is this a depiction of Tolkien's version of the Holy Grail?
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'Mercy!' cried Gandalf. 'If the giving of information is to be the cure of your inquisitiveness, I shall spend all the rest of my days in answering you. What more do you want to know?' 'The whole history of Middle-earth...' |
08-02-2007, 04:16 PM | #8 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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Quote:
The only 'good' slight difference is that this Pietà isn't so much out of porportion... Just in sotty taste. Genie Morgoth and His Forty Thieves This one is probably the 'best' so far of Morgoth and his compadre, the Witch-King... ~ Critique Ka
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08-03-2007, 04:42 AM | #9 | |
A Mere Boggart
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Quote:
...this is not the greatest art in the world...
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08-03-2007, 11:05 AM | #10 |
Late Istar
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I honestly don't see what's so bad about the Hildebrandts' "Wedding of Aragorn and Arwen". Though most of the rest of those are quite bad. The worst is undoubtedly the "exotic dancer" Luthien. And while I'm generally a fan of Nasmith and a defender of Bakshi's movie, Ulmo and Sam are certainly not their respective strong points.
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08-03-2007, 03:32 PM | #11 | |
Cryptic Aura
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Quote:
Some comments by davem and myself on Esty's other art thread, the good one, probably best belong on this thread: Some thoughts on what makes for bad Tolkien art, from post #31 on the Tolkien the Artist thread.
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I’ll sing his roots off. I’ll sing a wind up and blow leaf and branch away. Last edited by Bêthberry; 08-03-2007 at 03:36 PM. |
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08-04-2007, 01:13 AM | #12 |
Illustrious Ulair
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The style I'm most uncomfortable with is the 'mighty thewed barbarian' - which I find borders on a fascistic, Ubermensch approach, & totally alien to Tolkien's creation. Conan always defeats the demons & monsters & attains victory through his physical strength & use of weapons. Turin, for example, is an inversion of the Ubermensch ideal. In fact Tolkien seems to be pointing up the stupidity & falsity of such an 'ideal' in the real world. The image of Hurin I linked to earlier is a classic example of everything Tolkien's work condemns.
I recall an interview with one of the editors at Harper Collins discussing Alan Lee's M-e work. She stated that she preferred Lee's work to that of other Tolkien artists, because too many depictions of Tolkien's characters had them looking directly at us, but she felt that that was wrong, & that the 'view' should be the other way - we should gaze into their world, they shouldn't look out into ours. I take her point. We're looking at a world long gone & he imagery should reflect that - those beings & places have long since passed from the world. The imagery shouldn't be 'dynamic', or make us feel the events are happening 'now'. 'For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground & tell sad stories of the death of Kings'. In Tolkien's tales we are looking back on things that happened before recorded history, & its essential that that mood is communicated by the artist - M-e is not another world in which events are happening 'now', but this world many, many ages past. That's why Baynes' & Juchimov's illustrations (& Eric Fraser's 'woodcut' style illustrations for the Folio Society Hobbit & LotR) work so well for me. (I think this is why I especially disliked the movie characters' regular lapses into contemporary idiom - nothing about M-e should feel 'modern': it should always feel 'old' & long past. Perhaps this is why dramatisation can't really work as well as reading or hearing the story......)
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“Everything was an object. If you killed a dwarf you could use it as a weapon – it was no different to other large heavy objects." Last edited by davem; 08-04-2007 at 02:46 AM. |
01-22-2008, 04:53 PM | #13 | |
Shade with a Blade
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Lord have mercy! HAAAA!
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Stories and songs. |
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10-04-2009, 01:07 PM | #16 | |
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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Quote:
But I know there are some other pics that were on the page that I can't recall enough about to summon the Magical Key Words with which to retrieve them. Ah, well--such is the fate of all things in this Middle-earth...
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10-04-2009, 03:23 PM | #17 |
Shade with a Blade
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Gondor has no pants...Gondor needs no pants...
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Stories and songs. |
10-04-2009, 04:26 PM | #18 | ||
Ghost Prince of Cardolan
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Quote:
Quote:
~ "I'm sick of milking this giant, invisible... cow all the time." Ka
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06-01-2011, 02:49 PM | #19 |
Blossom of Dwimordene
Join Date: Oct 2010
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Treebeard. Reminds me more of a carrot than a tree. Edit: I see the image has been removed from the link I posted above... this is the same picture... let's hope it shows...
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera Last edited by Galadriel55; 06-13-2011 at 07:59 PM. |
05-01-2013, 07:26 AM | #20 |
Woman of Secret Shadow
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05-02-2013, 05:39 AM | #22 | |
Blossom of Dwimordene
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Quote:
I totally agree that the amusement increases with the time!
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You passed from under darkened dome, you enter now the secret land. - Take me to Finrod's fabled home!... ~ Finrod: The Rock Opera |
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05-02-2013, 07:13 AM | #23 |
Woman of Secret Shadow
Join Date: Oct 2006
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Yes, and it's also a classical Lamentation of Christ composition, with hints of St. Sebastian. I don't know my art history well enough to tell if it's based on any particular painting, but Aragorn as Virgin Mary is definitely one of the funniest things about it.
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He bit me, and I was not gentle. |
05-02-2013, 09:08 AM | #24 |
Wisest of the Noldor
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But it's *intended* as a joke... right? Right???
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